Eurovision: Rants from a barefooter

Monthly Archives: May 2014

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Today I crashed my high school German teacher’s class for a “Eurovision Highlights” party (screw you, AP season for delaying it to 2 weeks after ESC week) and noticed a shoe covered in golden duct tape. After trying (an pretty much failing) to say “goldener Schuh” due to getting reminded of the Herreys (and their “gyllene skor”), two thoughts ran through my head:

1) Great. I really need to work on my German because I now sound like a complete eejit and pretty much lost all my speaking ability (not that there was really any to start with anyway…)

Overall the song wasn’t too bad, though at the time I didn’t expect it to qualify. Part of me liked it, while another part of me absolutely hated the refrain. Unlike Sweden’s 2011 entry where I could shout in my head that the song was about Sweden as a whole and not the “creepy Swedish guy,” I couldn’t convince myself to find a less literal interpretation.

“If you don’t know, I’m in love with you. When summertime falls it becomes untrue, because of the shoes I’m wearing today: One is called love; the other is pain.”

Besides entering chem labs (con acid) and bio labs (icky microbes), the only time I will willingly put on shoes is during the winter, for obvious reasons: Frostbite sucks, and no barefooter wants to lose a toe because they were too proud to protect their feet. In that case, from a super-literal perspective, the refrain states that a barefooter could only be in a relationship during the winter (or any time below freezing). And why love and pain? The relationship would make people feel good, while wearing shoes would suck.

That’s tetanus bacteria fyi

Corrosive!

Frostbite…eugh…

I wanted to complain about the lyrics to someone. It couldn’t be true… until I ended up in a winter relationship and spending half the time wearing boots two sizes too big for me. And it ended just as the snow was about to melt.

(Then again, I was kind of cheating on the person with a 2 kg organic chemistry textbook, so there’s not much to comment on the situation anyways)

I’m not a physics person, and half the time I can barely concentrate in the said class because (for Harry Potter fans) Physics 1 is pretty much Professor Umbridge teaching drivers’ ed. We can derive and use equations for cars moving down a straight road, on a banked road, tires slipping on ice, starting, stopping, crashing into trucks, etc. But we’re never going to touch a real car. Oh, we’re talking about [pretty much any concept in the mechanics section]? The demo is going to be dropping a piece of chalk into the prof’s hand from less than 0.5 meter. So sure, there’s all the real-life examples in the world, but we’re not going to get to them

Anyways, as much as I like Eurovision, the physics department seems to have found a way into the contest, either through the lyrics or through the music video.

Instead of complaining that this song may or may not have similarities to Avicii’s “Wake Me Up”, I’m going to complain about the dancing. The mechanical kinetic energy is rotational only for dancers in the middle, while it is split into rotational and translational for dancers in the outer circle. And then there’s moment of inertia: If the radius is larger, there will be a greater moment of inertia as the dancers aren’t changing mass significantly- which means more energy will be diverted to rotational energy when their skirts flare out…

“You got me, you got me! A force more powerful than gravity; it’s physics…there’s no escape!”

The universal gravitational constant is 6.67×10-11,which is really small; the only reason why we can’t jump off the earth is because the earth is huge. Because of that, there’s no way that two 50 kg people across a theoretically 10 meter wide street would be attracted to each other through gravity alone (For anyone who did the math, that would be 1.67×10-9N). In this case, there has to be something to bring the two people together. Let’s try the force that Lena mentioned: love. It’s probably got a larger constant value than gravity, and it doesn’t involve charges like with electromagnetism. However, we don’t know if the value’s constant, or if the equation is even similar to universal gravitational force.

Song: Is it Right? (Germany 2014- Elaiza)
Concept: how much I don’t like physics lab

“Is it right? Or is it wrong? I can’t go on, you can’t go on. If you say yes or even no, you don’t know how and where to go…”

So this isn’t really about physics in general, but just about how much I don’t like the lab. Or at least the lab at the uni I attended was terrible and pointless with a monotone teaching assistant. Completing the lab wasn’t too bad, but all we did really was collect some data on Excel, graph it, and talk about the results. Points were deducted for pretty much no reason half the time, and the department didn’t help much. They would speed through the derived equations, look at us as though we were complete idiots, or just deduct points because we made incorrect measurements using a poorly-explained setup.

Song: Undo (Sweden 2014- Sanna Nielsen)
Concept: Entropy

So it’s really hard to feel whole after breaking up? Let’s say there’s a bigger chance of feeling better and moving on than a)un-lighting a match, b) un-burning a tree, c) un-breaking a glass jar, or d) cramming every drop of spray paint back into the jar after spraying it out. As entropy is constantly increasing, the universe gets more disorganized.

I’m sure there more of this is going to happen next year because of school related issues, but this shows how ESC can show up in almost every aspect of life. Let’s see where else the contest shows up?

So the 59th Eurovision Song Contest has officially ended with DR taking down the set, Conchita Wurst flying home to Austria with the trophy, and people posting “my top 37 post-contest entries” videos on YouTube. In that case, it’s probably time to wrap stuff up and find something to do before the 2015 national final season kicks up in December. Maybe start watching old contest videos. Or maybe finding a new hobby in general. My family members suggested something…

Also known as: they’re trying to get me out of the Eurovision world, which isn’t going to work…

Anyways, with exception to Israel not qualifying (14th out of 15 in the semi? Really?) and Russia getting booed (OK, fine, so I get that fans were unhappy with the country’s political situation, but doing it to two 17-year-olds was at the least, extremely rude), I really enjoyed the contest. This was the first contest that I got to listen to for the entire time: Obnoxious classwork during ESC season isn’t the greatest, so watching the complete contest is a no-go at the moment, and the few moments that I put down the textbook to watch were a great escape from the real world:

The Dutch entry:

So yes, I didn’t write a review on “Calm After the Storm” before the contest because the song didn’t “sink in” my head yet until around 2 weeks before the semi-finals, when my head decided CATS was going to be an Ohrwurm two days in a row. Maybe it was the beat, or maybe just how little effort it took to feel the lyrics, or maybe how the song kicked me in the face in reminding me of breaking up. Or it was mix of all three. Anyways, I’m probably going to keep this in my permanent driving playlist, and I’ll definitely get the feels if it comes up when driving in the rain.

The Swiss entry:

I’m not sure how people don’t start tapping their feet or whistle along to Sebalter’s entry, because it’s so upbeat and cheerful. Anyways, I’m really happy for him getting to the final and making the top half. (Even better is that I got my sister to listen to “the singing lawyer” multiple times…)

Stalkery interviews which involved food: Is it just me, or did DR have some fun stalking all the artists’ social network sites? Where did they learn that Richard Micallef (of Firelight) wanted a full English breakfast? Or Molly and that she liked Curly Wurly cake? I would have been really excited if the hosts had brought me my favourite food, but how did they know??

Museum of Eurovision History sketch: And this is how not to run a museum 🙂

Looks like it’s time to start brushing up on my German for Eurovision next year in Austria. Not that I’m going to be at the live contest (only in my dreams…), but no one knows what’s going to happen 🙂

Or at least Europe as a whole doesn’t, because Israel didn’t qualify L. I’m trying to not act upset like on Tuesday, when I already figured that Latvia wouldn’t qualify (even though their entry was pretty much on the same level of cute as their debut entry in 2000), and that correctly predicting 8 out of 10 isn’t too bad. Then again, when it’s one of your top 2 entries, it’s kind of hard to calm down. (Or I could just steal Norway’s lyrics and say that there’s a silent storm inside me…)

As consolation, Slovenia qualifying was a pleasant surprise, and the song’s staging had a bit of an Estonia 2009 feel to it. And that Switzerland qualified. Add to that the (somewhat expected) event of welcoming Poland back to the final J

1) Given that this is my first time predicting, 8 out of 10 isn’t that bad: My predicted qualifying entries for Semi-Final 1: Armenia, Estonia, Sweden, Albania, Russia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Netherlands, Montenegro, Hungary, while the actual qualifying entries in Semi-Final 1: Armenia, Sweden, Iceland, Russia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, San Marino, Netherlands, Montenegro, Hungary. Then again, no one really expected Iceland or San Marino to qualify.

2) It’s really hard to study for a 7-week class while watching the contest, even when the sound is turned of (Family still doesn’t approve of me being a fan XD ). Since I didn’t know if I could watch the SF live , I watched all the rehearsals (or at least the recap of them) and figured that the sound would have been pretty similar.

3) My sister will tolerate recaps, as long as she gets to make sarcastic remarks while she watches them.

Let’s see what happens in the second semi-final. It’s going to be really exciting for me, since most of my favourite entries are in this SF.

I don’t think I can decide which 10 I want in the final, because I like them all (though I wouldn’t really mind if Lithuania and Romania sat out). However, if Israel and Switzerland don’t make the final, I will be very upset.